[sustran] 'A good wander unveils the wonder of a city': readers on urban walking

[Vinay Baindur]

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/06/a-good-wander-unveils-the-wonder-of-a-city-readers-on-urban-walking




'A good wander unveils the wonder of a city': readers on urban walking

As reports show
<http://publications.arup.com/publications/c/cities_alive_towards_a_walking_world>
that
walking reduces stress, anxiety and depression, we asked readers for their
stories of the joys of city wanders, from Glasgow to Damascus
[image: Silhouette of a man walking on an anonymous street.]
<https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/06/a-good-wander-unveils-the-wonder-of-a-city-readers-on-urban-walking#img-1>
‘You
never step in the same city twice’ ... a pedestrian at night. Photograph:
Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Cities is supported by
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Francesca Perry <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/francesca-perry>
and Guardian
readers <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/guardian-readers>

Saturday 6 August 2016 08.30 BST

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‘Walking reveals layers of history’

*London* at first light is amazing. There is time to appreciate the
architecture, to watch the river, to revel in the nooks and crannies and
hidden bits of green. It is possible to walk the pavements at whatever pace
desired without the impediment of other people and without breathing in the
choking pollution of rush hour traffic. Layers of history are revealed in
tiny details. A poor man’s time travel. *(Anonymous)*

‘Urban walking for me is therapy’

I live in *Vienna* and not a single day goes by where I don’t walk. Walking
to work or university is for me a mental therapy, preparing for what I need
to do during the coming hours. When I feel down, I go to the city centre.
Scrolling through the different gardens and look at the architecture always
cheers me up. Especially when I feel lonely the combination of parks,
architecture and tourists help me feel like I’m not that alone. *(Alejandro
Sosa, 29)*

‘The paving stones echo my heartbeats’

As I walk along the city centre streets the paving stones echo my
heartbeats. Pavement cafes jingle with drinking glasses. Traffic stops and
starts, time hangs. Aimless walkers look round and absorb the scene, the
smell, and the sound of exhaust fumes as the tall buildings watch. *Newcastle
upon Tyne* is a city that combines the ills of an urban space with an
enduring love of life.* (Asit Maitra)*

[image: Newcastle street scene]
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 Newcastle: ‘Traffic stops and starts, time hangs.’ Photograph: Rich
LaSalle/Getty Images‘I go back and walk around the neighbourhood where I
grew up’

I left *Buenos Aires* 30 years ago and every time I return I walk around
the Olivos neighbourhood where I grew up. A year ago I walked first on my
own and later with two children as my guides, to see the neighbourhood
through their eyes. Saturday, July 4, a wintry afternoon and a soccer game
means the streets are empty. When I start my walk I can smell logs burning
in fireplaces, and later popcorn when the game starts. Except for a dog’s
bark, maybe a car, or a neighbour welcoming friends, everything is quiet.
These are the same places I remember from my childhood: the three blocks to
school, my friends’ homes, the York Cinema, the Borges Café. Some of the
houses look exactly the same. The streets are lined with jacarandas,
plátanos and linden. But neighbours are no longer lingering on street
corners chatting and building the social fabric with their everyday
interactions. *(Silvia Blitzer Golombek)*

‘I walk and feel at home’

I belong to *Calcutta*, the city the British built long, long ago. The
ghosts of the sahibs can still be seen in the dark rooms of the stately
buildings they have left behind. Whenever I walk the streets, I look for
this past, which is not mine per se but belongs to me as I belong to the
city. Esplanade Mansions diagonally opposite the governor’s house.
Shuttered windows, trellised ledges. Curzon Park, named after Lord Curzon,
is right across the street. On winter nights, I wait there for the tram
home. The smell of eggs being fried on roadside ovens fills the air like an
old friend. As I wait, the city lights twinkle in the distance, traffic
roars, the trams raise a clamour. Inevitably, my tram never arrives. So I
start walking again, towards the centre of the city. I wade through the
filth and feel at home in a city that is like a piece of past preserved for
present times, for me. *(Anusua Mukherjee, 36)*

‘You never step in the same city twice’

Nowhere is walking more surreally varied and trance-inducing than in
*London*. I began by trekking great stretches of the Duckett’s and Regent’s
canals, relishing the Victorian grandeur of their engineering and the
flashes of beauty among the melancholy abandonment. I have boomeranged from
Bloomsbury down to the river, zipped to the centre of Waterloo Bridge with
its peerless view of the city (and evocations of the Kinks) and back to the
north bank and circuitous routes to the eddying chaos of Oxford Circus and
on up to the circuit round Regent’s Park. London is a strange multiverse of
extreme wealth in enclaves cheek-by-jowl with mean streets and tat; a thing
of monotone heft intercut with ‘hidden’ pocket gardens and squares, and
threaded through by the ebb and flow of the serpentine river. It is so
alive, this beast, that it changes its skin if you stay away from a spot
for longer than a few months: you go back and it’s sprouted anew or been
unaccountably razed. It’s an evolving totality that keeps London quick in
all the meanings of that term: live, glowing, swift. It’s as if we’re
running to keep up. You never step in the same city twice. *(Anonymous)*

[image: Regents Canal]
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 London’s Regent’s canal: ‘I relish the Victorian grandeur of engineering
and flashes of beauty.’ Photograph: amc/Alamy‘When you walk through a city
you are walking through time’

When I’ve not been able to get to Scottish hills there’s always been
*Glasgow*, the town centre with its undulating hills, grid system, and fine
Georgian architecture able to evoke a small liveable mixture of New York
and San Francisco on the Clyde. I’d just got my bus pass at 60 and took a
bus up to the top of the town to look at it. After that I walked home to
the south side. Firstly down the city centre’s Georgian canyoned,
tobogganing hills to the river at the heart of the city. Then over Bells
Bridge and on to the south side. I always feel I’m back in old Glasgow
then. On through Pollokshields which for me always brings to mind Van
Morrison’s Cypress Avenue (different city I know). On into Pollok country
park: the pace of the city just drops away to nothing as you enter the
park. Out and past the high flats that they’re knocking down. Up past
Eastwood church where the Stirling Maxwells used to worship at the time of
World War One. After that I’m home. When you walk through a city you are
always walking through time as well as space and that’s what I really love
about an urban walk. *(Bert Thomson, 62)*

‘Lunch hour explorations lead me to things I wouldn’t have done’

I’ve been exploring my home town of *Leeds* on foot for the last two years
on my lunch hour. This has been in response to my sedentary desk job. I’ve
met some fantastic folk and have done things that I’d never have done
otherwise like playing piano in a pub, eating with the Chinese Elderly
Association, attending lectures, finding small independent art spaces,
meditating in the local Buddhist Temple, going on a tour of Holbeck,
singing in a choir. I’ve also been researching the flora and fauna,
searching for urban animals. I’ve seen migrating salmon jumping up the weir
downstream. All in a lunchtime. *(workerslunchtime)*

‘Seeing cities by car tends to be devoid of wonder’

I’ve lived carless since around 5 years ago when I moved to *Santiago de
Chile*and continued that way when I moved to *Mexico City*. What I’ve
discovered is that cities by car tend to be ugly, drab and devoid of
wonder. By walking I’ve been better able to understand the culture of the
cities I’ve lived in. In little details like if people chose or not to
close their apartment curtains or wether they create small sacred religious
spaces I’ve managed to create a deeper empathy and understanding of the way
of life, not just ‘life’ in the city*. (Víctor González, 28)*

[image: Santiago]
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 Santiago: ‘By walking I’ve been better able to understand the culture of
the cities.’ Photograph: Vìctor González‘It’s a human experience that’s
getting rarer’

I spend a couple hours every day walking. It reminds me that we are all in
this one big urban organism, which I think this is very hard to see if you
move faster through a city. Even though it can be alienating living in a
big city, it can also force you not to ignore other people’s stories in a
way that you lose if you don’t walk. Crucially, it’s a human experience
that doesn’t involve transaction of money, goods or services, and
experiences like that are getting rarer and rarer in a rentier, ticket
punching society. *(Connor Snedecor, 31)*

‘The best things can happen when you get lost in cities’

I was walking - on my own - in the old city in *Hue*, Vietnam. The streets
were deserted and I was completely lost. I stood in a corner with a map,
and a man approached. ‘What is your name?’ he said. I didn’t realise those
were his only words of English, so showed him the map and asked him where I
was. He waved to me to follow him – and took me to his family home. I spent
the day with them. Nobody spoke English and I speak no Vietnamese. But I
played with the children and we all smiled and laughed a lot. At the end of
the day the man took me to the city wall and waved me on my way. The very
best things can happen when you get lost in cities.* (Jo Carroll, 66)*

‘Walking gives me a sense of connection and makes me less afraid’

I am a Kenyan living in *Berlin*. Ever since I came to Europe I have learnt
to greatly appreciate and love walking. I love to visit cities and towns in
different European countries and I always make a point to walk around and
‘take in’ the environment. I walk to see the local people, roads,
landscapes, parks, and how the buildings change in the different parts of
the city. Walking also lets me discover little cafes, bookshops,
restaurants or graffiti that could be easily missed when you quickly drive
by. I always try to join walking tours whenever I can and so far I have met
and talked with people from all over the world and we’ve exchanged thoughts
about the place and our home cities. For me walking and seeing what is
around me gives me a sense of connection and makes me less afraid of being
in a new place.” *(Chepng’etich Biomndo, 31)*

[image: A visitor walks through the snow covered Holocaust memorial in
Berlin]
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 Berlin: ‘Ever since I came to Europe I have learnt to greatly appreciate
walking.’ Photograph: Kay Nietfeld/EPA‘London feels like an explosion of
streets’

*San Francisco* wandering is defined by a series of right-angles. Like a
schoolyard game, a choice between 4 directions is offered up on almost
every block. The simplicity, regularity and pattern of directions to choose
from feels reassuring for a newcomer, the grid system makes navigation so
easy. *London* by comparison feels like an explosion of streets, a wild web
spun out by centrefugal force. Narrow and winding, with not a thought for
any kind of city-wide structure, streets spit you out wherever they choose,
split unexpectedly, spin like catherine wheels off into multiple
roundabouts, and occasionally just stop completely. The London Wanderer can
wend one’s way between, betwixt, up-side, out-side, river-side, bank-side,
across and around forever. While SF wandering doesn’t hold the same
diversity of twists and turns, the surprising length and straightness of
the inner city roads sometimes hits me with an overwhelming vastness, a
feeling of rushing fast and straight as an arrow along a wide avenue
suspended like a mighty trench between two horizons. *(Alice Malia, 34)*

‘Walking makes cities human’

I do wonder around the city for many different reasons. If I need to think
and concentrate, walking is the best activity I can do. When in a new city,
I love walking around for miles and miles to get a sense of the space, from
the shape and colour of the buildings, to the sound of the streets, or to
observe how people live the everyday. Walking makes cities human. *(**Laura*
 *Ferrarello**, 33)*

‘Urban walking stimulates thinking, and triggers memories’

Through my personal experience, urban walking is a highly intellectual
activity. It stimulates thinking, and triggers memories. Some of my most
important life decisions I have taken while wandering aimlessly in cities.
In *Damascus*, the city where I was born, I practiced two types of
wandering in the city. I lived at the end of a highway stretching towards
the edge of the city; a big busy street with wide sidewalks. For some
reason, walking there provoked me to think. Apparently my brain worked when
my legs did. My other type of walking is painfully nostalgia-driven. The
old city of Damascus has been destroyed and rebuilt in layers over a few
centuries now. Modern buildings and old courtyard houses stand adjacently
in a complex network of intimate alleyways which lays over a Roman grid
plan. The result is an urban creation one can hardly get anywhere else. My
walks there were driven by familiarity and curiosity at the same time. A
maze-like network of streets had me walking the small city many times
without ever losing my sense of wonder. *(Rasha Kanjarawi)*

[image: Damascus’s Old City]
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 Damascus’s Old City: ‘a complex network of intimate alleyways.’
Photograph: Omar Sanadiki/Reuters‘Through walking we develop a sense of,
and for, places’

I was in *Berlin*’s Parisier Platz, the platform for the Brandenburg Gate.
I wanted to use walking as a technique to interrogate the quiet rhythms of
monumental spaces. I was interested in the things we miss. I cared about
how something so simple as walking might reveal them. Brandenburg Gate has
been site of, witness to, and protagonist in some of the most significant
inflection points in recent human history. But, Brandenburg Gate has more
nothing days than it does something days. The art of ordinary life is
hidden by misplaced attention. Now, every day, people just walk on by. But,
walking doesn’t have to simply be the force that transforms A into B.
Through walking we develop a sense of, and for, places. Walking occupies
the parts of a city and of our lives that escapes recognition – too often
we wish its wanton laboriousness away. Walking is an ordinary practice,
embracing it, and not its destination, demands attention to ordinary time.
That day, my world narrowed to the bricks, breeze, sun, clouds, grass,
litter, and strangers of the square. Walking recalibrates our focus. Our
task, then, is simple: pay attention. *(Josh Oware, 25)*

‘I find walking without maps similar to cooking without recipes’

Walking is my favourite way to exercise both mind and body. Writer’s block,
hazy hangovers, beginning-of-relationship highs and breakup lows, antsy
days at the desk or on the couch, arrivals to new places and bittersweet
departures, they’ve all been sorted through with walking. I find something
uniquely appealing about walking, as it effectively clouds the divide
between everyday life and dedicated reprieve. It’s my primary means of
transportation in my carless urban life, whether in Baltimore where I lived
or now in *Cardiff*, where I’ve been the last year. I set off for hours of
unplanned, aimless wandering. I find walking without maps similar to
cooking without recipes; sometimes there are unexpected masterpieces, and
other times, total flops. Most of the time, it falls somewhere in the
middle. There’s something satisfying about experiencing the subtle
differences in window flyers and neighbour’s gardens and weather changes
(over the course of a few hours and days and months) that one can only get
by walking the streets of one’s city every day. *(Raychel Santo, 24)*

‘Only by walking can I really see people and their cities’

Each narrow, dilapidated street in *Cairo* ran along the veins in my body.
To this day, my relationship with the city and its multifarious streets,
avenues, squares, markets, mosques, alleys, bridges, underpasses, remains
my most lasting connection with Cairo. In new cities, I crave the soothing
sway of the ordinary. I find beauty in it, in witnessing such intimacy: a
clothesline piercing the blue sky, street vendors, neighbours chatting, the
local supermarket, children in the streets. Only by walking can I really
see people and their cities. Only now can I witness the passing of time and
where we are all standing today. I walk with a destination and without. I
walk into places whether I am wanted or not. I walk alone. My walks in the
cities that become my temporary homes are the one thing that bridges the
distance between myself and the immensity of the world we inhabit. When
confronted with why I rather walk thirty minutes than pay a few dollars (or
cents if you happen to be in Cairo) for public transport, I only have this
one certainty: If I didn’t, I would be forever adrift. *(Lorena Rios, 26)*

 Follow <https://twitter.com/JillHunger>
Jill Hunger Griffin @JillHunger <https://twitter.com/JillHunger>

Firm believer that a good wander unveils the wonder of a city.https://
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